Daniel Hannan weighs in to counsel voters against backing UKIP
At the end of my post yesterday about UKIP leader Lord Pearson's speech to his party's spring conference, I suggested that anyone thinking of supporting them should not waste their vote on a fringe candidate with no chance of winning, but rather come to a conclusion as to which of the two contenders to be Prime Minister they would rather help usher into office.
I am delighted to see that Daniel Hannan has echoed my point of view on his blog this afternoon. Perhaps the europhobic detractors of the Conservative Party would rather hear it from him than from me. Here's an excerpt of what the South East of England MEP writes after a visit to Seaford in the Lewes constituency:
"There are only two possible Prime Ministers: David Cameron and Gordon Brown. Voting UKIP in a place like Seaford means boosting the prospects of its Euro-fanatical LibDem MP, Norman Baker, who reneged on his promise of a referendum, and who argues that the EU “is central to the UK’s economic prosperity”. Voting UKIP, in Seaford as in many other constituencies, means putting a federalist into parliament. It risks prolonging the tenure of this incompetent, wastrel, cowardly Labour regime.
"Readers of this blog know that David Cameron and I don’t agree about European integration. I want an in-or-out referendum, and returned to the backbenches to campaign for one. But David Cameron will be a million times better than Gordon Brown as Prime Minister.
"To repeat: Labour has introduced 111 tax rises since 1997, taken a trillion pounds in additional taxation, and still left us with a Greek-level deficit: 12.6 per cent of GDP and rising. Of every four pounds Gordon Brown spends, one is borrowed. Our national debt is rising by nearly £6,000 a second. We can’t afford another five weeks of this, let alone another five years.
"What I’d ideally like – and what I assume my UKIP readers also aspire to – is a situation where UKIP no longer needs to exist: where it can award itself a medal and retire with honour, job done. Obviously, we’re not at that point yet. But I worry that every activist who deserts the Tories for UKIP is retarding the prospects of a Euro-sceptic Conservative Party without taking his or her energies to an alternative party of government."
Jonathan Isaby
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